Her Danno
by Without-A-Muse
Summary: Grace's point of view on her Dad over the years and how, no matter what life does to him, he always keeps going.


The thing most adults don't understand about little kids is that they have this way of actually understanding things. Maybe not completely and fully, in all of the entirety, of course, but they understand things to a fuller extent than what adults give them credit.

At the age of nine she understands why her parents are no longer together. Why they play the silly games of dog chasing its tail when it comes to calling and answering each other. She even understands why she only sees her dad on the weekends, and why that sometimes doesn't even happen.

It's not those things that she understands. Things like why her dad has anger problems and gets this pained look in his eyes every time he sees her. That's when she knows he's remembering the time when he was still with her mom and they were a family, whole. He's noticing how she's starting to follow her mother's footsteps, looks wise.

(She wants to tell him it's alright, she's taking after him personality wise, in the way she just will not back. In the way she wants to protect the two people she loves the most. How she has this want to fight to keep things some what together. )

The thing is, she's a daddy's girl, through and through, but letting her mother know that would break her heart. So, she plays the neutral game. And she plays it well.

By the age of fifteen, she knows her dad's grey hairs aren't only Steve's fault. Not that they're from her, really. She's been good, because that's what she knew her Danno needed in a daughter.

Seven years on the island have actually mellowed her father out, which no one really thought possibly, she thinks with a small laugh as she climbs into the car beside him as he picks her up after school.

Life is the reason for the grey hair. The fact that life has yet to give her father a break is the culprit. She knows he's been kicked in the gut more times than he's managed to keep track of.

(While he might not have, she has. Since she's been counting, age five, it's been a hundred and forty seven kicks in the gut for her Danno.)

She's learned over the years that there's not a lot she can do for him when it happens. Other than let him think he's holding her, when, in fact, she's holding him, making sure he doesn't crumble down around them both.

After being around Steven McGarrett for the past seven years, she knows he knows she's been helping protect her Danno for the major part of her life. She also knows that he's been helping her out since Danno joined them out on the island. The cases of beer and the half and half pizzas that he'll bring, knocking on Danno's door anytime he suspects his partner needs a pick up. The way he'll drop anything at the slightest notice, no matter what, for their Danno.

(Another thing: over the past years, he's become not just 'her' Danno. He's become 'their' Danno. Somewhere between the Christmases and the nights she's fallen asleep on his couch, they've had a silent agreement that they can share him. It came out of the mutual silent agreement that one person was going to need to sleep while the other was going to have to try and take care of Danno while he was busy trying not to fall apart.)

She turns eighteen and the list of things he's running through make no sense. He repeats himself, trying to make sure he covers all the bases of what she needs to know in order to survive college and she shares a smile with Steve because the only reason Danno would give up food is because his love's being tossed out of his mouth instead.

He's the one who drives her to where she's going to be living for the next four years (studying criminology and physiology). He knows it almost killed her mom that she gave him that gift, but her mom always as Step-Stan. Danno. Well, Danno's only really ever had her. And now Steven. Now it's going to be Steven's job to make sure her dad doesn't drink too many Longboards or go without sleep for close to a week. That he doesn't push himself more than he can stand, that he doesn't punish himself for the bad guys he doesn't manage to catch and put behind bars.

Life is hard, she knows that. She's known that from a young age, growing up with parents that drifted apart, moving from the main land to the island, a dad who's been shot more times that she really cares to count. It's left the most important man in her life on the ground, so close to broken that she's wondered how he's managed to pick himself up, time after time.

The important thing is, though, that he has. That her dad, her Danno, picked himself up. After every heart ache, every gunshot wound, every criminal who got away, every weekend he didn't get to spend with her, he was still up the next day, carrying on living.


End file.
